When you move to a new place, it’s easy to spot cultural differences. They are inevitable. When I moved from Dublin to London about six years ago, the most pervasive and interesting (but very frustrating) difference between the two countries by far was the stratified and insular nature of class in England. This remains true.
Of course, in Ireland there is a concept of class. We have her two classes: the working class and the “ideas.” Middle-class people (and whatever else is above that, although that is impossible) are more or less registered as British in Ireland. They are allowed, but somewhat reluctantly, and will be judged if they lean too far into it.
This concept is problematic and fundamentally very closed-minded. That’s why if you try to rock up in a pea coat, everyone in your town will start calling you “comrade.” You’ll see your newly laminated eyebrows at your cousin’s wedding, and your dad’s friend will lean heavily on the (free) bar and say, “Marty Morrissey is here.” When you say, “Marty, how are you doing?” a big part of you just wants to die.
Class permeates everything in London, and is much more subtle than the main class symbols at home: accent and economics. I quickly realized that I needed to “pass.” Otherwise the door will close. You need to understand what music is “good”. Which outfit says, “I went to an elite university, so please pay me as much as my coworker with a double-barrel last name.” And which foods are more likely to show people you don’t belong.
These foods include things that aren’t currently trending, things that have melted cheese on them, and chips that aren’t made from zucchini. That’s tiring. That means you can only listen to Paul Brady’s “Nothing But The Same Old Story” on headphones, and you have to pretend that zucchini fries taste just as good as potato fries. .
British supermarkets reflect the country’s class structure. Icelandic supermarkets, where almost everything is frozen, are understood to be for the poor. Asda, like Tesco, targets the pragmatic and efficient working class. If you’re heading to Sainsbury’s, you’re an upwardly mobile, middle-class, somewhat ideological person. Marks & Spencer? Your father owns a boat and lives on it for three months of the year, docked in Latvia for taxes. A job in the financial industry or a marriage to an obscure European aristocrat will certainly go very well if you start shopping at Waitrose every week.
Once I went there at lunchtime and found a bottle of something in the comparable “value” range. It was Waitrose Essential Ironing Water. It’s the water you put in your iron, but it’s more expensive. I thought to myself, holding its exotic weight gently and anxiously, as if I had found a baby parrot in the laundry aisle. “You’re not in Limerick anymore, are you?” Just holding the British-made iron water at Waitrose could last him two to four years at Mountjoy. But there are also more egregious crimes.
The pinnacle of the British supermarket concept is America’s Whole Foods (founded by Libertarians and owned by Amazon). There, you can buy sausage-free sausages and free-range Eco Panadol for those headaches when a nanny isn’t available. It’s like silencing the kids. They also make great smoothies.
When I moved from London to Australia two weeks ago, I was confident that supermarkets would tell me a lot about the class structure of my new country of residence, for reasons I recently wrote about on this page. In the supermarket aisles, I was relieved to discover that Australians generally seemed to have a similar, less insidious class structure, closer to Ireland.
They are practical people and the market for Panda Free Low Carb Panadol here is smaller than in the UK. This is probably because so many Australians are descendants of several generations of Irish criminals, but I’ve noticed that they tend to be reluctant when you tell them about it. Especially since everyone here seems to be claiming that the indicted Irish ancestors were sent here for stealing bread to feed their families, and that the British had all the felons in their homes. This is especially true when you point out that he seems to be claiming that he was efficient and considerate about retaining people.
[ It was him or me: the battle to catch Mr Jingles, our furry little London lout ]
There’s an Aldi near me where you can pick up a 2kg pack of beef mince for around €13, or just be amazed, but Coles and Woolworth generally have a monopoly when it comes to Australian groceries . This system is flawed. Probably a price hike. Conspicuous lack of Percy Pig. And what happens when one day you have an ironing emergency and you really need the ironing water?
Because, although we may pretend we aren’t, the Irish can be a little ideological sometimes. In every Irishman’s heart is a little Englishman in a peacoat who loves Yorkshire puddings and Percy Pig. It’s not our fault. It’s just part of the legacy of colonialism.
When my husband, a stylish young Gen Z man with a big mop of hair and the face of someone firmly committed to veganism come September, asked if there was a Whole Foods in Canberra? When he asked, the boy looked at him with a puzzled expression. “What the hell?” he replied. His husband elaborated, listing terms like “organic” and “grain-free.” “There’s a farmers’ market on Sunday,” the kind man replied, showing mild disgust at the question. “There’s lots of vegetables and stuff.” I feel like this place isn’t as far from home as I thought.